Empires’ colors still problematic

[100thMonkey]

Platform: Steam
Build version: 1.0.8.6 (Beta); was started with 1.0.8.4 (Beta)
Severity: Medium
Annoyance factor: Very high
Saved game:

The Culture - Ackdarian - 2763-08-03.7z

(3.25 MiB) Downloaded 5 times

Despite the improvements of v1.0.8.4, there are still problems with empire colors. Here’s an image of the border between two neighboring empires in my current game:

Border zoomed-in.png (242.78 KiB) Viewed 282 times

As you can see, the difference in the two empires’ colors isn’t very striking. If it were only the borders, it wouldn’t be so bad. A little bit annoying, but not too bad.

But it isn’t only the border!

What’s way more annoying in those situations, is when the bases and stations colors of two neighboring empires are similar. This is especially annoying later in a game, when there’s a lot of bases and stations, and you’re at war with an empire whose bases are of a similar color to yours. It’s not the case in the screenshot above, or in the attached save (very early in the game and no war yet). But I’ve encounter that in previous games, and it’s immensely annoying: you almost have to check in every system to see if the bases and stations belong to you or your enemy. Tedious to say the least.

But even if I don't yet have that problem in my current game, I wanted to let you know that neighboring empires with similar colors still happen.

As I mentionned in another thread, I think the best solution to this problem is to make it possible for players to change empire colors during games. Why? Here’s what I wrote in that thread:

(...) Because as the game progresses and some empires engulf others, at one point some empires with similar colors will become neighbors. So even if the colors were 'right' at the beginning of the game, they wouldn't anymore at that point. There has to be a way to correct those situations when they occur.

Link to the thread mentionned above:
https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1&t=388055

[mordachai]

+1

Changing empire colors seems super easy - and solves the issue.

Alternate would be to use fewer but more contrasting colors and then add stripes/dashes/dots etc.
Enhancement would be to draw actual borderlines (but this needs to be in addition to making the colors distinct).

Another thought would be to always add a "war" icon to all bases / objects you're at war with (or have an overlay mode to enable this at various zoom levels).

Related: it's very hard to tell what systems belong to which nations even if colors were perfect: because the system view fails to ever show a nation's flags at that level, except when doing diplomacy - and even then, only at arbitrary locations - not generally on every system containing a colony - so it's never clear who is who?

[100thMonkey]

Yes, I think that allowing the user to change empire colors in-game is the best solution, without adding visual noise on the map (which patterns on each of the territory would do). And as you said, it shouldn't be super hard to implement.

As for your war overlay idea: I love it! But while writing this post, a variant of it came to me: empire assets overlays. One overlay for each empire, to highlight that empire's assets on the map, wherever those assets are. Including colonies located in other empires' territories (which, I believe, would also address your "related" concern).

An important aspect of those overlays: contrary to "war overlays", they would work even when at peace. Making it easier to plan future wars.

Ideally, it would be possible to activate more than one of those overlays at a given time. So if you're at war with two empires (or plan a war with them), you'd be able to activate both of these empires' overlays, highlighting targets from both empires on the map.